No. 24 Wisconsin (Last week: 13) / Mary Langenfeld, USA TODAY Sports

by Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports

by Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports

MADISON, Wis. - When high school coaches across this state visit Wisconsin to watch practice every winter, the same sequence occurs: They see the Badgers pair up â?? just two players and a ball â?? and engage in the most rudimentary activity, monotonously passing and catching a basketball.

Then the high school coaches find Wisconsin assistant Lamont Paris to say, "You guys don't have to water things down just because we're here."

"We're not," Paris says. "We do things other teams in the middle of the season don't do. Basics."

The oft-told narrative of this college basketball season involves a handful of highlight reel-creating freshmen and new officiating rules intended to increase scoring and improve the game's artistry. Complicating that script are the Wisconsin players here, squatting in defensive stances as their head coach stands in the corner, hands behind his back, whistling at an imperfect box out.

Wisconsin, off to its best start since the 1915-16 season, ranks No. 1 in the RPI and has beaten more top 100 teams (nine) than any team in the country. The sixth-ranked Badgers (12-0) have done it the way they have always done it under 13th-year coach Bo Ryan, highlighting unglamorous skills like precise passing angles, adequate spacing and strong pivots. Ryan's no-frills system is as effective as ever, even if no jump stops will find there way onto YouTube.

"It is not pretty," says sophomore Sam Dekker, the team's second-leading scorer. "It has some rough edges on it. But it's what we do. It's not so sexy. But winning is fun. If it's not sexy, that's fine with us. We're not going to be dunking on everyone."

What they will do is make more free throws than their opponents attempt (196-166). They will be among the nation's leaders in fewest turnovers per game, as they are this season (third). And they will allow opponents so few open looks at the basket that Wisconsin players say they see the frustration in opponents' facial expressions and body language.

"There is not this secret magic wand that we wave," says Wisconsin associate head coach Greg Gard, who has worked with Ryan for two decades. "You follow the system. You work the plan â?¦ People get caught up in the flash and the glitter, those types of plays. When you simplify it and slow things down, frame by frame, it's the basketball fundamentals that come into play."

Ryan, 65, is among the most accomplished coaches yet to reach the Final Four. He has never finished worse than fourth in the rugged Big Ten. Iowa assistant Sherman Dillard says Ryan has ingrained his system into his players to such an extent that it's like a "religion the way they play it. They don't deviate."

"If you go across the country, take anybody â?? I don't care if you're talking about (Mike) Krzyzewski, I don't care if you're talking about (John) Calipari," Marquette assistant Brad Autry says. "A system. Recruit to that system. Be consistent with that system. I don't know if there is anybody better than him (Ryan). Year after year, the names change, but it is the same."

Sitting in his office appropriately beneath a peach basket, another nod toward the game's roots and fundamentals, Ryan smiles. He remembers hearing the same sentiment at his first college head-coaching stop, Wisconsin-Platteville, where he won four NCAA Division III national championships between 1984 and 1999.

"People would tell me," Ryan says, "if it was 1988 or 1998, that the guys even looked the same on the team."

***

Asked about the effectiveness of his system, Ryan offered an 11-minute answer, seemingly without taking two breaths. He pinpointed the constants: making free throws, keeping opponents off the line, valuing the basketball, getting more and better shots than the opponents and a track record of player development.

And he used two other sports as metaphors: baseball and all of its intricate strategies, and tennis. A tennis instructor long ago, Ryan said he would spend the first set identifying his opponent's weakest shot, and the second set making him repeatedly hit that shot.

Ryan sees the game of basketball a specific way, with all of its cuts and screens, and has since he made $3,800 teaching history and coaching at Brookhaven Junior High outside Philadelphia in 1972. He explains the game best when he sees the court, which is why is gazes at a framed picture of Wisconsin's court while elaborating on his system.

"I'm looking up there at the Kohl Center floor in case you're wondering why I â?? it's not that I am not making eye contact with you â?? but I think better when I am looking at the court," he says.

Ryan got his book smarts from his mother, Louise; his street smarts and street toughness from his father, Butch, who never finished high school, then lied about his age and entered the military and, thus, World War II. Afterward, he coached youth teams â?? primarily underprivileged inner city kids â?? for 40 years.

Moms loved Butch Ryan because he was a disciplinarian. Kids loved him for helping them. And Bo Ryan remembers them coming to his home to thank his dad for caring. Seeing the influence his dad had on kids, Ryan said, was one of the reasons he entered the coaching profession.

Bo Ryan's offensive vision came into focus while he was an assistant at Wisconsin between 1976 and 1984. Tasked with preparing scouting reports of Big Ten teams, Ryan analyzed and critiqued the game plans of Jud Heathcote, Gene Keady and Bob Knight, plucking tactics from each.

Ryan took a pay cut, earning less than $30,000, in his first college head-coaching job at Platteville. One day while he watched practice from high above the court through a window, he noted the movement of the ball with precise cutting and screening and thought it looked like a swing. The swing offense was born.

After working as a head coach in Wisconsin for nearly 30 years â?? Wisconsin-Platteville, Milwaukee and Wisconsin â?? aspects of Ryan's swing offense are sprinkled throughout the state at all levels of basketball.

"A lot of teams are copying that system," says Gary Grzesk, the head coach at Division III St. Norbert College in De Pere. "With the success they have had, everybody is going to look at successful programs, and you can't argue with what Bo Ryan has done. There is a reason teams are copying and emulating them."

There's even an AAU team called the Wisconsin Swing.

During Buzz Williams' first three years at Marquette, from 2008 through 2011, he says, the Badgers almost exclusively ran the swing offense. The Badgers have since deviated from traditional swing principles depending upon their personnel.

Defensively? Their man-to-man defense is as miserly as ever, even with new officiating rules that crack down on hand-checking. Wisconsin players say they never practiced defending while using their hands, so the rules don't hinder their ability as much.

"Some kids don't want to play it, some people don't want to watch it," says Autry, the Marquette assistant. "As a basketball coach, I go, 'Damn, that's good basketball.' In a society where no one wants to have any discipline in what they do, they do it like that. And you can count on it.

"He isn't going, 'Hey, we're going full-court press this year. We're going '40 minutes of hell.' It's going to be '40 minutes of mild irritation', and we're just going to be in front of you like this."

Autry then crouched into a defensive stance and froze, an image that encapsulates Badgers basketball under Ryan.

***

Williams, whose Marquette team lost to Wisconsin, 70-64, on Dec. 7, says he believes this is Ryan's best team.

Autry says Wisconsin players take more "un-Wisconsin" shots this season but only because they have guys who can make them. In fact, all five starters have led the team in scoring in at least one game this season.

All five starters shoot at least 39% from three-point range, including 7-footer Frank Kaminsky, the team's leading scorer at 14.6 points per game. And the heart and soul of the team is Josh Gasser, who missed all of last season with a torn ACL.

A perfect fit for Ryan's system, Gasser prides himself on taking charges even during the AAU summer circuit, a feat as common for most high school players as a lunar eclipse.

"It's in my blood," Gasser says.

Gasser played excellent defense on Virginia standout Joe Harris, holding him to two points on 1-of-10 shooting, in a 48-38 road win Dec. 4. The 38 points were the fewest Wisconsin has allowed in a road game since 1957.

"I love playing games like that," Gasser says.

Even in a game like that, which included just four Virginia fast-break points, Ryan will pinpoint defensive miscues in the following film session. After any basket scored, he will find a flaw or breakdown in the defense.

"He expects to get a shutout every night," Gasser says.

Dekker recalls playing overall impressive games a few times but then remembering a single missed blockout. And he will stay up thinking about that blockout because he knows it will be noted in the film session.

"We do things the same way all the time," Gard says. "There is no gray area for the players. They are not guessing what coach wants in practice. It was the same last week, the same a month ago, the same last year."

If you're going to beat the Badgers' defense, it likely won't be from three-point range or from the free-throw line. Just 21.7% of opponents' points come from three-pointers, according to KenPom.com. And just 15.2% of opponents' points come from the free-throw line.

And to stymie Wisconsin's offense, you need to be "really locked in mentally," says Iowa junior standout Aaron White, who had his first breakout game as a collegian as a freshman against Wisconsin. "They want to play 30 seconds of offense and they figure by the time you get to 31 or 32 seconds, the defense will lose focus and they'll hit an open three or get a dump down pass."

Dillard, the Iowa assistant, says Wisconsin players are particularly adept at making shots late in the shot clock. And in the final minute of games this season, Wisconsin is shooting 83.3% (25 of 30) at the free-throw line.

"When you are in a close game, they will not panic," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery says. "And they are in a lot of them. They are in close games with teams that you would expect them to beat handedly. But they win them. They win an incredible high percentage of close games. They just know how to play in that type of game."

***

With its often times deliberate offense, the misnomer about Wisconsin this season is that it can't run. On the first day of practice, Dekker says, Ryan told the team that they had the personnel to push the ball and get some shots early in the shot clock. And the Badgers opened the season by scoring 86 points against St. John's.

But the one central ingredient over the years has been unselfishness. From the time Ryan began coaching in his 20s until today, he has remained consistent with what Gard calls a philosophy of "simplicity" and surrounded himself with players who embraced it.

"Whether it was because you're 20 something years old â?? and needless to say I have mellowed a little bit â?? but a Type A personality, I kept hungry kids around me," Ryan says. "I've got hungry kids that I coach now. I recruit hungry kids, kids that love the game and want to get better and feel they have more questions than answers. It is very hard to find, but we've got 'em."

Ryan knows the holidays will be tough this season, his first without both parents. Louise Ryan, 86, died last December of congestive heart failure. Butch Ryan, 89, died in August.

Since 1976, Ryan and his dad had gone together to every Final Four, where affable Butch Ryan, a retired pipe fitter, was among the most popular talkers in the coaches' hotel lobby.

Butch Ryan won't be at Ryan's side in Arlington, Texas, for the Final Four this April. That weekend, if Ryan's unglamorous "40 minutes of mild irritation" keeps up, he may not be in the coaches' hotel lobby much.